We all know more
than we know we know. But generally, our mental files are disorganized, our
system of storing information random, and therefore our interest in seemingly
unrelated data tends to depend on the moment. That Dinosaurs existed for a 135
million years, separated from Cave Man by another 63 million, give or take a
year or two, takes most students by surprise, Fred Flintstones notwithstanding.
So we watch the film as divers excavate a Spanish Armada Galleon, and we see
the sharks nosing the treasure, and we hear “1588”, and for the vast majority
of students of all ages, almost nothing else comes readily to mind.
Shakespeare, Elizabeth I, Galileo, The Crusades, Robin Hood, Marco Polo, and
Joan of Arc appear to co-exist. And the vast majority struggle with placing the
‘Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Chinese Age of Print, Reformation, Renaissance,
Iron Age, Industrial Revolution, and The Romantics’ into a chronological order.
Information perceived as disparate or disjointed, to most of us, is mentally
discarded. Our insecurity with ‘what we don’t know’ inhibits the acquisition of
other knowledge.

However, once an
individual has even one personally interesting thing that can
assertively be placed on each time period of the whole Time Line,
an evident excitement about adding to the mental file cabinet is readily
witnessed. The Individualized Enrichment Program was born.

Across the last
twenty years, with the author’s making presentations about the program to
colleagues at conventions, as well as to students at large, individually or
collectively, including sharing it with Adult Education Students at Night
School for nine years, the ‘ah-ha’ factor has been significant and remarkable.
The ‘common sense’ of it all has inspired student after student to wonder why
it is not part of every school’s curriculum, and to wish that it had been.
Colleagues who’ve implemented it have reported its efficacy, and its continuing
success. Designed to accommodate the individual, its ‘independent’ nature is
readily taken on by most students. Ideally, every student should be
given this roadmap. Personal interests in a given subject, however diverse, as
observed developing through the ages, makes for an ongoing interest in very
many other things in other centuries that can be added to the mental (or
actual) ‘scrap book’ of the independent learner. Our task is to provide the
student with a methodology, an organizational framework for perpetual learning,
and ‘a common sense’ basis for ongoing education.

The Individualized
Enrichment Program provides for every student a comprehensive ‘common sense’
basis of chronological knowledge for a lifetime’s interest. It is structured
for the individual purposefully to exercise Differentiated Learning Styles
continually ‘in the round’, to employ all conceivable mediums, and thereby to
develop ‘holistically’. It provides for a perpetual basis upon which forever to
add information. And it is designed to be an addendum to every
curriculum in every discipline, without the teacher, per se, needing any
additional or specialized knowledge. Implemented at any grade level, the
program provides a continual basis for Subject enrichment as well as for the
diversity of any individual’s ongoing interests.

As a learner comes
to see the necessity of having a foundation for further learning, that learner
soon finds a need to know more and more. All we have to do, as teachers, is
beckon, and guide.

Or is that, ‘beam
the learner aboard’?

rationale:

1) Establishing
this Program may make better use of the potential for students of independent
learning habits. Its annual framework of proceeding with chronological
knowledge in a logistical self-directed process provides for a focus on
multi-level work habits and productivity, using every imaginable medium, rather
than ‘just’ a continuing acquisition of ‘more’ knowledge, per se. The
program’s course is intended to provide a lifetime basis of ongoing
relevance for perpetual reference-based learning and interest.

2) Originally designed by the author in 1983
as the Humanities Graduation Program at Oakley Centre for the Gifted, a
five-year longitudinal study of the pupils involved proved its success. Also,
it has been presented at conventions and been implemented on an ongoing basis
with very many other independent students at several schools over the past two
decades. In 2003 the program received the prestigious Alberta Curriculum
Development Award for Innovative Practices. Last summer, following a visit to Canada by the
Superintendent of Gifted Education for the Hartlepool School District, England,
the author was invited to implement the program across six school districts,
and the results culminated in a most successful presentation of the students’
results to the incumbent Minister of Parliament.

3) As an adjunct
to a regular curriculum for students wanting such opportunity, minimal
monitoring of this program by a teacher is required. (R)-evolving ‘contracts’ are
suggested.

process:

1) For
Administrative purposes, students who are essentially self-motivated and who
also are keen on enrichment learning, as proven by the student, as
determined by teachers and administration, and thereafter sanctioned by parental
permission, are candidates. As such, the program need not necessarily be
labeled ‘for gifted.’ It is intended for all of us.

2) The Independent
Learner student, all in-class work having been met, or able to be met, and at
the teacher’s discretion, is ‘free’ to progress with the Enrichment Program.

3) The Program’s annual
focus is to overview a broad based chronological development of history (in
every conceivable genre), successively learning more and more, and to challenge
the student to reflect such learning in the round. I.e., the
student ideally is to practice differentiated learning styles in terms of
application to task, to exercise cognitive, affective, concrete sequential, and
abstract random domains with as many ingenious styles of presentation as
creativity provides. The duration of any given task, depending on the
student, should encourage practice with the unfamiliar, rather than dissuade. (E.g.,
make a song up about Vikings; play it on guitar.)

4) As such, the
student ought to be encouraged to maintain a diary-portfolio of undertakings,
studies, diversity of projects, readings, and insights throughout a lifetime.

5) An Academic
Certificate of Recognition, enhancing a student’s resume, might be awarded,
rather than a grade.

Conclusion: As
educators, limited in resources and time as we are by artificial pupil-teacher
ratios and a disparate but prescribed exam-based curriculum, we still ought to
be striving to provide a common-sense interest basis for a perpetual
reference-based education. I trust that this program will do much to inspire
the deserving students (and teachers) of all schools.

Procedure,
Projects, and Product: Initially linear by nature, rather than
mine-shafts of knowledge, ongoing learning ought to be reflected by a perpetual
‘exercise in the round’ of such challenging productivity as:

This Enrichment
Program, whereby the student undertakes a chronological research and overview
of the development of our Universe and mankind from Big Bang to the present, is
our program of self-motivated application to task. Such a chronological
framework is intended to provide for a knowledge basis within which to append
information and to inspire insight throughout a lifetime.

Your consistent
application to task is vital to your Enrichment Activities, not just your
talent. For each point below, please give yourself as fair a mark out
of 10 ascareful and honest thought about youraverageeffort and behaviour would reflect: